British Cockades
The cockade of Great Britain has been the Hanovarian black since the reign of the first King George. "In the Georgian
days, when the troops wore the old three-cornered hats, these required, for the purpose of aiming along the musket, that the left side should be looped up, and this was done by a brooch. Anyone who has ever looked at a soldier's uniform knows how every opportunity is taken of using the Royal Crown and cypher and badges, and
the brooch at the side was no exception to this rule. In fact, the whole Royal Shield, surrounded by the Garter and surmounted by the Crown, shows, if silhouetted, the basis of the fan-shaped military cockade, and it was this metal ornament at the side of the three-cornered hat that was the original of our cockade.
"The white cockade of ribbon being the badge of the Jacobites, [the Stuarts] the black metal brooch-ornament, which, as part of their uniform all the Royal troops wore, very naturally was accepted as the badge of the other side, and, without any formal intention and certainly without the slightest regulation or initiation for that object, it became 'the black cockade of Hanover.'"
The Genealogical Magazine, Volume 5, 1902
Bonnie Prince Charlie |
Scottish Cockades
The Stuarts' claim to the British throne came through their royal ancestry in the House of York. The symbol of York is a white rose. When Bonnie Prince Charlie lead the final attempt to regain the throne for the Stuarts, it is said that he put a white rose in his hat. After that, his followers adopted the white rose-like cockade to wear in their Scotch bonnets.It is thought that the fact that the French were involved in Prince Charlie's cause may also have led to the adoption of the white cockade. France's national cockade at the time of the Jacobite Rising of 1745 was white.
Though the Stuart rebellion failed, the white cockade has continued to be associated with Scottish history.
Irish Cockades
When Prince William of Orange gained the throne of England and Ireland in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he brought his orange cockades with him. But William was Protestant and many of the Catholic Irish preferred to follow the deposed King James Stuart. James's forces came to be identified with green, as William's were with orange.But it wasn't until Ireland seceded from Great Britain in 1916 that the two colors were paired together along with white, creating the Irish tricolor.
Left: A white royalist cockade - Right: The new tricolor cockade |
French Cockades
The cockade of France was traditionally white (based on the "lilies of France). But in 1789, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille and released its prisoners. After this opening action of the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette suggested that the colors of Paris, red and blue, be paired with the royal color of white to form a new national cockade.An 1832 German cockade |
German Cockades
German states have existed in the area of Germany for nearly two thousand years. Cockade designs were eventually created for each German state and remained a method of identification even after the modern German nation was formed. The national cockade is now black, red and gold, and is often paired with the person's particular state cockade.
"Black, with some distinction, enters into the cockades
of the German nations. The Austrian is black and yellow; the Prussian, black
and white; the Hanovarian, black. After the German war of liberation in 1813, a
national cockade of black, red, and gold came into general use, and was
afterwards assumed by the military and by officials. The wearing of these
German cockades was prohibited in 1832, by a resolution of the German Diet; but
in 1848 they were again introduced, not only by patriots as a badge of German
union, but into the armies." - Chambers
Encyclopedia
A World War II Italian cockade |
Italian Cockades
According to official histories, the Italian tricolor first
appeared on November 14, 1794, when two students of Bologna, Giovanni Battista
De Rolandis and Luigi Zamboni led an uprising against the Austrian absolutist
power. As an emblem of the rebellion they chose the cockade of the Paris
revolution, but distinguished it with blue instead of green.
Two years later, Napoleon approved the colors for the
national cockade as well as the national flag. “Since they [the two students]
chose these three colors, so let them be.” The official Italian cockade has
been red, white and green ever since.
Dutch Cockades
"At Amsterdam, the [French] troops were no sooner gone than the inhabitants rose in insurrection, deposed the Imperial authorities, hoisted the orange flag, and established a provisional government, with a view to the re-establishment of the ancient order of things…the people every where, amidst cries of 'Orange Boven!' and universal rapture, mounted the orange cockade, and reinstated the ancient authorities; and after twenty years of foreign domination and suffering, the glorious spectacle was exhibited, of a people peacefully regaining their independence, and not shedding a drop of blood, and, without either passion or vengeance, reverting to the institutions of former times."